Minimal use of images

Travellers may be using Wikitravel from networks with very low bandwidth. In some countries, an Internet café with 10 computers connected to a single 56k modem is fairly common. Image use in articles should be kept at the minimum necessary.

This doesn't mean that 0 images is preferred to 1 image, but that no more images than are necessary to get across a point or impression should be used.

Internal images

Images used in Wikitravel articles should be uploaded to Wikitravel Shared. External images should not be used. Also, avoid linking to external image pages since the reader may find it annoying to jump from site to site in search of images only.

Using Wikimedia images

Many images from the Wikimedia Commons or Wikipedia are licensed as GFDL and thus not compatible with Wikitravel. However, an increasing number of Wikimedia contributors are choosing to dual-license their work under Attribution-ShareAlike 1.0, which is compatible, so check the image data and the uploader's user page for a possible dual-license note. Check this link to find pages with dual license on Wikimedia Commons. At the moment you cannot link images directly from commons, instead you have to upload the files to Wikitravel Shared, too.

Image sizes

Uploading high-quality source images is encouraged. Images should be less than 4Mb total size, and preferably less than 2Mb. There is a hard limit of 8Mb on uploads to wikitravel.org.

Pixel dimensions should be 1536x2048 (3 megapixels) or smaller, as this is enough for a 6"x4.5" print at 300 DPI (half a guidebook page). When displayed, pictures can be automatically scaled to smaller thumbnails; see How to add an image for details.

Image file names

Image file names should be somewhat meaningful. Many digital cameras give images names like "IMG00001.JPG". You should try to rename these files to something like "cathedral_in_cologne.jpg", or "spanish_steps.jpg", etc. Use descriptive names with full words and underscores ("_") between the words.

This makes it easier for other people to include the image in articles, and it keeps Wikitravel Shared from having name clashes.

Do not include the image size in the file name.

People in photos

In general, photos of people will be removed from Wikitravel. There are two reasons for this policy:

A photo of the Taj Mahal is useful for travellers; a photo of your girlfriend in a funny hat standing in front of the Taj Mahal is not. In general, we don't really want pictures of travellers or other people in Wikitravel. Some exceptions might be for particular sports or activities or crowd scenes or illustrating some costume or uniform.

In the United States and elsewhere human beings have privacy rights, that is, a right to control the use of their own image, even if they didn't create the image. Image creators need to get authorization from human subjects of photos to publish the images. See http://www.danheller.com/model-release.html for a description of why and when a model release is required. A general rule of thumb is that if an image contains a subject that is identifiable, a model release is needed.

The think further reading of the web site sourced above will prove instructive:

...consider the "face in the crowd" picture shown and discussed earlier. In both cases, the subjects are identifiable, but there's another common element: they are either on public land, or are freely visible from public land. When such a condition exists, a new twist comes into play: Fair Use. This is actually a fairly complicated legal term that refers to many things. In the context of this discussion, one of the definitions of fair use includes a condition in which a person cannot assume a degree of privacy because he's in public space, which means that he can be photographed (and cannot stop the process).

Another of the Fair Use definitions is the use of copyrighted materials on public display. For example, a statue in a public square, or a painting on a wall in a public building are both copyrighted by the artists that made them. However, because they are in public space, you are free to photograph them, and to license those photos for editorial use without being subject to copyright infringement. Take note: the use is editorial, which means you can license the photo to a newspaper, but not to a company for use in an ad.Seth1066 13:56, 27 April 2007 (EDT)

Other media

One of Wikitravel's goals is to have Wikitravel articles useful as printed pages. Use of other media files — like digital sound clips or video images — is therefore deprecated.